


What Hawkeye did on their Summer Vacation

by FredGodOf



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Art Museums, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Running around Europe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 19:56:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15825870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FredGodOf/pseuds/FredGodOf
Summary: "Hey." A message pops up from Hawkguy on Kate's phone. "I'm in a clinic in Madrid, can you come and get me? The doc's kind of smart and she's figured out my secret weakness.""You don't have a secret weakness."  Kate types back, and then "You dumbass." because its been two weeks since the whole SHIELD/Hydra thing hit the news and this is the first she's heard that Clint is alive.





	What Hawkeye did on their Summer Vacation

"Hey." A message pops up from Hawkguy on Kate's phone. "I'm in a clinic in Madrid, can you come and get me? The doc's kind of smart and she's figured out my secret weakness."

"You don't have a secret weakness."  Kate types back, and then "You dumbass." because its been two weeks since the whole SHIELD/Hydra thing hit the news and this is the first she's heard that Clint is alive.  

"Totally have a secret weakness, it's a superhero thing."

"Did someone give you morphine?" Kate shoots back as she starts checking for the next available flight to Spain.

"Yeah."  Clint messages, and then a minute later, "Hey, did you do your charity deduction thing yet?"

"Are you being held hostage, is your secret weakness that you're broke?"

"I'm not a hostage, and I'm not broke."  Then a long pause because sometimes Clint doesn't seem to understand that instant messages should be brief, "I'm  unemployed now, that's weird, I haven't been unemployed since I was eight." someone has given him a lot of morphine,  "The doc says I can't leave unless someone comes and gets me, because people who are friends with Natalie don't know the meaning of self preservation."

Kate Bishop likes to think that Natasha Romanoff is her friend  (Natasha would say that she doesn't believe in friends, but Natasha also lies, a lot) and yeah, the doctor's assessment holds.  "Madrid Spain right?"

"Is there another one?"

"Probably in Iowa or something, give me  the address, I'll be there tomorrow."

"Thanks Katie-Kate."  Clint types, "I will owe you one."

"You will owe me like seven."  Kate insists (it isn't true, she's so glad he's alive, she's so glad he called her).

-

Clint looks awful, pale and sweaty (the sweaty might just be Madrid in the summer), the kind of pale where you can tell the person has lost a lot of blood,  (Kate doesn't know when she started to recognize that look). 

She pulls out a box the right size to hold earrings or cuff links, but with a Stark logo on it.

Clint makes grabby hands and she tosses it over.  He fits in the hearing aids and grins. "Lost them somewhere in Libya."

The clinic takes up a middle floor of a fairly decrepit hostel in the tourist heavy section of the city, and the rooms are in the same worn down, in need of a coat of paint condition.  Actually they need a coat of paint more than the rest of the place, because these rooms have also been scrubbed within an inch of their lives and it had knocked more the paint off, making weird patches of faded blue and green and orange underneath the current pink.  

There is an adorable eight year old girl who had to move her chair to let Kate in, but immediately replaced it, and a six year old who is introduced as her brother sitting in front of the window.  The girl has a stack of children's books and is quietly reading one to her brother and showing him the pictures. (Kate is totally not still jealous because she is an only child, totally and completely not jealous)

"You're secret weakness is adorable children?"  Kate asks. 

"My weakness is adorable children, they have been given very strict orders not to let me leave."

"Makes sense.  Where'd the doc get them from, is there a service?"

"She also  runs a free daycare for the cleaners."

"Does Natasha keeps track of people running for sainthood in most major cities?"

"Natasha knows her, from before."

"Oh." Kate says.  (She's familiar with Natasha's ledger,  or at least the outline of it. Natasha has asked to come along twice on missions that were not SHIELD, and only given the reason that she owed somebody.  She had been any happier at the end than she had been at the beginning. Kate wonders if the doctor's way is working any better for her.) "So, gut shot?"

Clint grins because he is a crazy bastard, "Nat and I are gonna have matching scars.  She wasn't impressed"

"When did you hear from her?" 

"She came and got me out of Libya, I didn't have an extraction plan."

"Because you never have an extraction plan." Kate says  because it makes Clint grin and look proud of himself.

"But there was supposed to be another agent there to give me the cover I needed to infiltrate the group.  She was supposed to wing me, but she was Hydra apparently and decided after what went down to take me out.  It actually worked better as cover after all, no one would believe that a gut shot is the first part of a plan."

Kate lets her head thunk down against the side of the bed. "You worked an infiltration like this?"

"Nah, I  was okay for like a week before I got an infection, and then I guess a couple of days after Nat showed up and did the whole rescue thing.  She dropped me off here." Clint pauses and frowns, "She's probably gone for a while."

"I know, I saw her, probably just before she came for you."

Natasha had shown up inside Kate's room in the middle of the night, a day after walking out of the hearing, drank two protein shakes while frowning at them, but declining anything that tasted less like chalk.  Then she 'borrowed' a few outfits and a wheeled carry on. Kate has known Clint since she was seventeen and got herself arrested for being a vigilante. In the five years since then Kate had learned to recognize some nonstandard forms of affection.  Natasha letting you know she is taking your things is one of those. The hug before she left was entirely unnecessary but appreciated. (The not commenting on the fact that Kate had several outfits in her closet that were Natasha's size and not her own was also appreciated.)

-

The doctor says Clint could technically leave now, but if Kate can convince him to stay a few more days it would really be better.  

Clint shrugs, "I guess I don't really have anywhere better to be."

Kate brings him postcards from the Prado and ice cream for his guards and helps him change his bandages.

"I saw 'Saturn Devouring his Son.' I had a nightmare about that picture when I was little.  Greek myths are interesting stories for children." Kate says once Clint is settled back in bed.  "Why do you have two incisions?" 

"Doc says that she forgot to tell me, I don't have an appendix anymore."

"How did you keep it this long?"

"Healthy living.  Guernica is at the Reina Sofia.  I saw it last time I was in the city." Clint says, his eyes  slipping closed.

Kate goes and sees Guernica.  It's selfish but she comes back and breaks in before dawn, so she can see it in the quiet.  She joins a group people in the street who are just leaving clubs and follows them into a restaurant.  She comes back to Clint's room with Churros and hot chocolate.

"You are spoiling the security."  Clint says, accepting his own cup.

"You would be too if you were allowed out of here." Kate eats a churro,  "I didn't realize Guernica was so big. It always looked so small in history books, and I thought that Saturn devouring his child would be huge."

"History books get a lot wrong." Clint says with a twist of his lips.  

"I know." Kate says.

Kate isn't sure how Clint thought she was going to write off a donation to a clinic that technically did not exist, in another country.   But then again, he knows that not why she gives the doctor enough money to keep her running for year anyways.

The doctor, (Kate wishes that she had a name, but it would only be an alias anyways) frowns at her.  "I have my own resources. And I owed the widow a favor."

"Well, so do I, and now you have more resources." Kate announces.  "Thank you for taking care of my friend."

They take the train to Paris and check into a hostel where there's a postcard of Goliath Birdeater spider waiting for them.  The back has a drawing of the Brooklyn Bridge on it.

"I think this her trying to be subtle." Clint says as they walk upstairs.

"She did not draw that." Kate declares, looking at the drawing

"No, that had to be Steve."  Clint smiles, "He also is kind of sucking at subtlety."

Nick Fury is waiting in their room.  Kate is very glad that the doctor made Clint stay in Madrid till he was healed enough to lie on a roof for six hours.  (Kate is very sad that she did not get a picture of Nick Fury pretending to be a very dumb American Tourist. No one will ever believe the fanny pack without independent confirmation.  Clint does not count as independent confirmation, they don't have independent code names. Kate thinks about the list of people who know that Fury is alive and she could try and convince about the fanny pack.  Natasha, Maria Hill, Coulson. Captain America if she ever meets him. Its a short list)

Eli calls.  He's going to basic, hopes to get into the Rangers like Coulson. (He was recruited the same way Kate was.  Coulson's baby vigilantes. He wore something that looked kind of like his granddad's uniform and started picking fights with idiots) He asks what Kate is doing.

Kate is sitting in a secret room underneath a gas station in Chechnya, on a secret mission to take out a secret Hydra base. She tells him that she's a grand tour of Europe.   He calls her princess fondly and a promises to call her when he's allowed to have a phone again.

(Kate is really fucking tired of secrets.  Eli Bradley should be asking Coulson for tips (not that he needs them) about joining the rangers,  instead of doing it in his memory. She only knows Coulson's alive because Natasha caught him sneaking out of Clint's hospital room after his first assignment post New York, also known as the very fucking scary mission where Clint set off two sonic arrows within two feet of him and did take out the mind control device, but also blew eighty percent of his hearing and gave himself a concussion.  Coulson had been somewhat repentant about sneaking into Clint's room. Making him believe he was hallucinating on top of the concussion would not have been very nice.

Kate Bishop code name Hawkeye, is a lot of things (Not among them, Hawkgirl, Hawkwoman or Lady Hawkeye)  but she isn't dumb. She signed up for a world of secrets the first time she put on slightly modified mask she had worn to a masquerade ball and started using her newly learnt self defense and archery skills to take out scumbags in Central Park.  She signed up to keep other people's when Coulson had let himself into the holding cell and said, 'so you could go to court, and your father will probably get the charges reduced, or' and started to pull out paper work. The secrets aren't ever going away.  She's still allowed to be tired of them)

Fury gives them a list of Hydra bases he would like them to get rid of.  Then he disappears again.

Two days later she and Clint are in a base in Finland in a Mexican Standoff with a cyborg who looks like Bucky Barnes and a Hydra agent.

"This is not my life."  She says. (This is her life, this is going to be her life until it kills her)

"Pretty sure you can't storm a hydra base on accident."  says Cyborg-Barnes. 

"Cut off one head and two more shall  take its place" Says Hydra-guy.

She catches Barnes as they both roll their eyes.  He smiles at her and shoots the Hydra-guy.

"I think my name is Yakov." He says and holds out his (non-cyborg) right hand.  He can fire his gun one handed but she can't fire her bow. He notices and shrugs in a what-can-ya-do sort of way and tosses her Hydra-guy's gun.  

"Kate." she shakes. Then they take out the rest of the agents on the bottom two floors and meet Clint in the control room.  

"Who is this?"

"He's with me," she pauses and turns back to Yakov, "I think?"  (This is probably a terrible idea.)

Yakov shrugs.  "Yeah."

Clint shrugs "Okay." (This is clearly the worst idea ever.)

Yakov does not know who he is, besides some sort of brainwashed Hydra assassin.  Clint and Kate spend all of July sleeping in shifts, the lack of sleep is worth it for how efficiently Yakov takes down Hydra bases.

He might be more cyborg then the arm, since Clint says he seems kind of on the strength level of Rogers or Blonsky. They would investigate, but the first time Yakov gets hurt enough that he needs medical attention is kind of awful.

He keeps saying that he's fine, while continuing to bleed through his shirt.  (Kiev, he gets between Clint and a guy with a sword) Clint declares that he has until Kate finishes sewing up his leg to stop bleeding.  If power of will could quicken clotting Yakov would have done it.

Clint gets out of the leather upholstered dinning room chair they've decided to bleed all over today and gestures for Yakov to sit down.  Yakov clenches his teeth hard enough that they look like they might break before Clint even touches him, and when Clint leans over and starts to cut his shirt off he breaks one of the arms of the chairs.

(Kate has seen him barely flinch when someone shoves a knife in his leg, this isn't fear of pain)

"Okay,  this is not going to work." Clint declares.  "You're going to have to figure this out in the bathroom mirror."

Sitting on the edge of the tub Yakov is about ten times more relaxed.

"Can I try again?" Clint asks.

"Yeah."

Clint kneels in front of him and starts on the shirt again. Yakov doesn't look happy, but he doesn't break the tub.

Yakov says he doesn't know who he is, but agrees that he might be a clone of Bucky Barnes.  Every time he eats a banana he looks like its betrayed him. He is inordinately pleased by the purple hair elastics Kate always has on hand.  (It takes her way too long to figure out that it isn't the color, its that Barnes likes the novelty of something that is not a uniform. After that she and Clint start finding him weird t shirts and stripped socks and all the little things that SHIELD agents always wore underneath their uniforms.  He decides that he likes to wear skinny jeans, possibly on the grounds that they are the opposite of uniform cargo pants. Thus it is his own fault when a reconnaissance mission turns into an actual mission and the seams on his pants split when he kicks someone in the face and he has to fight the rest of the goons with his penguin boxers showing)

He likes westerns, (So they keep buying them at second hand shops and sneaking them into his bag.) He does not tend to notice that he's speaking, reading or listening to any of about twenty foreign languages, (most of them were spoken in the USSR) until its pointed out and has no predeveloped opinions on any music written or recorded after 1945. (Clint has worryingly taken responsibility for fixing that)

Yakov sleeps four hours at the most and quietly cries in his sleep.  (Kate and Clint both have their fair share of nightmares, Goya paintings being the least of them.)  

Cell phones, computers and credit cards are all a little baffling to him at first.  (He adapts quickly)

Fury leaves them notes at drop boxes that amend the list.  It's getting shorter. In August they start splitting watches with Yakov.  (It isn't like he couldn't kill them just because they're awake.)

Kate's friends are slowly finding things to do that aren't SHIELD.  Or they're getting sent to jail for being Hydra agents. She tells the ones who ask all the same lies she told Eli.  She's on a grand tour. The ones who ask are also the ones who know who Kate Bishop was before SHIELD. She tries not be disappointed when they pretty much accept that she's decided to join the ranks of the idle rich. (She is always disappointed)

They go to Paris, which completely fucking spooks Yakov.  He thinks he's been here before. (They know that he doesn't even tell them half of what's going on in his head.  Its fair, they haven't told him who they are besides enemies of Hydra.) With all of their pasts off limits for conversation they watch a lot of foreign language soap operas.

"This is the Count of Monte Cristo." Yakov declares three episodes into a Turkish soap opera.  "I've read this."

"When?" Clint asks, because that hasn't been one of the books they've passed around.

"No fucking clue." Yakov answers.

In September Natasha shows up at the safe house in York England where they are eating baked beans in tomato sauce and drinking hard cider because Scotland had been fucking exhausting and none of them want to try and be polite (or functional, or dressed) enough to sit in a restaurant.

"Rogers is going to kill you Hawkeye." Natasha announces flatly.  Its up to debate if she means one or both of them 

Yakov tries so hard not to react that it is it's own tell.

"Why?" Clint asks.

She points at Yakov.  Yakov has his hair in a ponytail, is wearing a pink shirt with the eiffel tower on it, skinny jeans and socks that have hedgehogs on them.  Three of his fingers on his right hand are taped together and Clint has carefully stuck a ring of gold achievement stars around the red star on his left shoulder because two bases ago, Clint had responded to 'the right wing of the castle is secure.' with 'of course it is,' and Barnes has said he felt unappreciated. 

"He's spent the last three months looking for Barnes."

Clint and Kate take a moment to digest this.  Yakov looks guilty.

"So..."  Clint says slowly, "Not a clone?"

Natasha blinks a few times.   

Clint turns to Yakov, "I would say I am deeply hurt, except we were pretty sure that you weren't telling something.  This is a lot better than you working for a splinter cell of Hydra."

"Did you think that?"

"Nah, you never stole any tech." 

Natasha rubs her temple (She likes them enough to fake tells). "What have you been doing?"  

"Fury gave us a list of targets, we've been taking them out."  Clint said. "It's not like we had a lot of resources, Yakov was also taking down Hydra bases.  We teamed up."

"You are insane."  Natasha pulls out a chair, "You shouldn't have been left alone for three months.

"Probably."  Kate admits and opens a can of cider for her.   
  



End file.
